


Will It Be Different? No.

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-29
Updated: 2007-07-29
Packaged: 2019-01-19 14:57:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12412500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: Just a short Lily/Sev one-shot, set during the summer after their fourth year.





	Will It Be Different? No.

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing except this story.

**Author’s Notes:** Severus loving Lily captivates me. I’m not sure what it is, but it does. It’s insane how much the relationship interests me. It’s not that I ship it or anything. I’m all for Lily/James. But the idea just interests me to now end. By the way, I was inspired to write this by snapesnogger’s Child-Like Fantasies on DeviantArt. Here’s the link to the picture: http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/60718972/

Wringing his hands together, he waited. He felt like he’d been waiting for hours. In essence, he had been. He’d been waiting since the last day of school, which had been how long ago? He thought for a moment. The last day of school, the last day he’d seen her, had been exactly five weeks ago. Seven days in a week. Twenty-four hours in a day. That had been 830 hours ago and if he added the three hours since eleven o’clock that day, it came out as a grand total of 833 hours since Severus Snape had last looked into the brilliant green eyes of Lily Evans.

Sighing, he sat down on the grass for the third time in two minutes. He could not sit still, not when he knew she was coming, that he’d be seeing her in less than an hour. “Maybe in even less than a _half_ an hour,” he mused, looking up at the fluffy white clouds in the sky that at that moment seemed to take the shape of the young red-headed girl herself.

Then, when he looked back down the hill, he saw it—the flash of red hair. Suddenly his heart began to race. Suddenly he felt nervous. Suddenly his cheeks began to flush.

“Hello, Severus,” she said.

And suddenly he was happy.

“Hi Lily,” he breathed, a faint smile appearing on his face.

“I’m sorry I’m late. My parents kept pestering me about cleaning my room and told me I couldn’t come if I didn’t have it clean.” She smiled slightly. “It would’ve been so much easier with magic.” She sat down next to Severus in the grass and leaned back, propped up by her elbows. “I can’t wait until we’re seventeen.”

As Lily spoke, Severus kept his eyes on her. He listened to her words, drank them in. He was so excited, so happy to be in her presence again after what felt like so long. Then he realized she stopped talking. “Yes, seventeen will be a good age. We’ll be able to do magic at home and we won’t get into any trouble for it.” He sighed happily and leaned back on his elbows as well. 

“I still can’t believe I’ve been at Hogwart’s for four years already. It just seems like it’s been going so fast.” She paused for a few minutes, looking up at the clouds.

Severus glanced over at her, and said, without even thinking, “I can’t wait for school to start up again…” Immediately his face flushed and he looked to the grass at his side, not occupied by Lily. 

She looked at him, her brow furrowed with concern. “Why? Have your parents been arguing again?”

Severus bit his lip, swallowing. “Well, yes, but they always argue. I…I just want to go back and… and work on my Potions, you know?” He followed this statement with a small, forced laugh.

Lily looked at him suspiciously for a moment before she looked back up at the sky. 

Every-so-often the young man would sneak glances. He would look at her perfect hair. He would see her green eyes. He would look at her small nose, and the way her arms looked as they held her up. Then the fifteen year old realized he was staring, not glancing, and quickly looked back up at the clouds, clearing his throat. “H-how has your summer been?”

Lily smiled slightly. “Oh, it’s been alright. Italy was fun, but I only had my parents to talk to…”

“Is Petunia still refusing to speak to you?”

Lily sighed, suddenly looking sad. Immediately Severus began to backtrack. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean… I didn’t want you to have to…” He took a breath. “I know you don’t like talking about it and I shouldn’t have mentioned it…”

Lily looked like she might almost laugh. “Oh, don’t worry Severus. It’s alright. She’s just getting more and more difficult as the days go on. She refuses to speak to me, but when she has friends over she doesn’t refuse to speak _about_ me. They always ask why I don’t go to the same school as she does. Once I heard her say that it was because I was too stupid. I was so angry I rushed in and told them that it wasn’t because I was stupid, it was because I was a witch.” She paused and gave Severus a sad smile. “All they did was stare for a few seconds then start laughing, as if I’d just proved at that very moment I _was_ too stupid to go to a Muggle school.”

Severus felt angry. Very angry. He hated Petunia, ever since the moment he’d first spoken to Lily. Even before Petunia knew that Lily was a witch she’d kept Lily from seeing him. Then once they knew for sure that Lily _was_ a witch, Petunia had tried even harder to keep Lily away from him. Severus had become so frustrated with her that once he made a tree branch fall on her shoulder. He’d immediately regretted it—it had made Lily upset too—but sometimes he still felt like she deserved _something_ for how she was treating Lily. “Why do you let her treat you like that, Lily? Why don’t you tell your parents or something, get her into trouble?”

Lily looked at him, confused. “But she’s my sister, Severus. I can’t be mean to her.”

“That obviously hasn’t stopped her!” He pointed out, sitting up.

Lily’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t say that.”

“But it’s—”

“Severus, don’t.”

He sighed, closing his eyes for a moment. 

“How has your summer been?” The girl broke the two-minute silence, keeping her eyes off of the young man next to her.

“Fine,” he said immediately, he, too, keeping his eyes at the sky. “I’ve just been here.” 

The pair spent the best part of thirty minutes sitting there, staring up at the sky. Then Lily spoke again.

“Look.” Her arm brushed against his as she pointed up at the sky above them. “That cloud looks like a cauldron, doesn’t it?” She looked down at him, smiling warmly. He knew that she felt bad about snapping at him. He knew that she thought he hadn’t meant it. Of course he had meant what he said about Petunia, but if holding that back would mean Lily would speak to him again, he wasn’t about to say anything to make her think any differently. 

Severus looked up following the tip of Lily’s finger to the cauldron-shaped cloud. He smiled. “Yes, it does. And look at that one!” He pointed to one to Lily’s left. “It looks like Slughorn.” He laughed, wondering how a cloud had managed to look so much like a large, extremely fat, human. Lily laughed too, looking at the funny shaped cloud. “You know,” she began, a smile still on her face, “I thought that since we hadn’t spoken much at school it wouldn’t be any fun today.” Severus felt slightly offended, but then she kept speaking. “But I was wrong. It suddenly feels like we’ve been talking all year.” She looked at the black-haired boy and smiled.

He smiled too, though it was kind of a sad smile. “Yes, it does.”

The rest of the afternoon, the pair sat on the hill, looking down at the houses below them and up at the sky above them. They sat there, talking and laughing, until the sky began to turn vibrant shades of orange, pink, and purple. 

As soon as the sky began to darken, silence fell once more between the two. For what seemed like forever to Severus, she didn’t say anything. Then she said quietly, “My parents are going to be expecting me home soon.”

Severus nodded. He was expecting this. He knew the day would eventually end and they would eventually have to return to their homes. “Well, bye Lily. I guess I’ll see you on the train.” He stood up, brushing off the back of his jeans.

Lily gave him a sad smile and nodded. “Yes, goodbye Sev.” Turning, she waved half-heartedly and began to walk down the hill. She was almost to the bottom when Severus moved slightly.

“It’s now or never,” he thought, and he bounded after her, grabbing her hand and stepping in front of her. “Lily,” he began, looking into her green eyes. “Promise me this year will be different.” He looked at her, a mixture of hope and dread in his eyes.

She looked at him for a moment. “Yes, Severus.” She gave a slight nod. “Yes, I promise.” The pair smiled at each other and then the red-headed girl began the slow walk back to her house again.

Severus continued to stand there for a few minutes, a sad smile lingering on his lips. He knew that the following year wouldn’t be different. But he could hope, couldn’t he? 


End file.
